


The Voiceless

by JenCforCarolina



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Blind Character, Blindness, Gen, Muteness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:02:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21954835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenCforCarolina/pseuds/JenCforCarolina
Summary: Eris lost her sight to the dark, and now finds kinship in one who lost their voice.
Relationships: Friendship - Relationship
Comments: 6
Kudos: 41





	The Voiceless

They approach her corner of the plaza with heavy footsteps and a quiet noise, deep in the throat. Maybe it is a greeting, cut off by nerves. Eris waits for a word.

This is how she decides in what ways to address the Guardians brave enough to approach her. She meets respect with respect, contempt with contempt. Silence with silence. It becomes a long silence, though, and she looks up eventually. Tilts three scowling, eyes towards this stranger.

The Guardian stands unmasked, helmet beneath an arm, waiting curiously, expectantly. She sees their outline in the green haze, shifting weight from foot to foot. Feels no ire in their posture, no superiority in the hold of their chin.

“Yes?” She rasps, trying to keep her voice neutral. A cluster of Hunters had stood and stared earlier, she is still on edge.

The Guardian makes to speak, and Eris thinks she can hear the faintest wisp of air through tunnels. A breathy and hopeful promise of a voice that sends her back to the tunnels -as many things do. But no syllables form, and a hand goes to their collar as eyes cast down, perhaps embarrassed, perhaps ashamed.

And Eris understands.

“Do you wish to help?” She asks, a little gentler than she first intended. The Guardian nods firmly, she can see it clearly.

“Very well. Come, listen, understand.” She beckons them closer, and they come.

* * *

“It was a nice voice.” Ikora mentions over tea and conversation of Eris’s new helper. “Always eager, full of life. The Speaker recalls the first words he heard from them. “What can I do?” Not even a week rezzed and so ready to fight.” Speaking of them she is wistful, and pitying, though not infantilizing. But it does bother Eris to hear such a commitment to past tense, rankles at the base of her spine. Does Ikora ever speak of her sight in that way? Does anyone?

“Still.” Ikora adds belatedly, after the conversation twists and coils back on itself. “I am glad it was all that was lost to the Garden.”

It is now that Eris grows closer to her new Guardian, in sympathy. She has lost her eyes, and they have lost their voice. Both three legged hunting dogs, struggling still to work, to avoid being abandoned by being useful. She feels a ribbon of connection, a streak of defensiveness on their behalf. She will give them a place to be useful, as Ikora has given her. They will be her eyes.

* * *

Eris never asks their name, what they wish to be called. There is no need. Her Guardian walks with heavy, loud footsteps. That is their name to her. Eris, a hunter and a survivor, has always valued silence, but comes to know the pace of the boots on tile and recognize it as secure and familiar. 

Since the pit, her eyes have granted her understanding of greater things. Of darkness and of light, of magic and weave. But they fail her in things material, in colors and detail. Her world is shadows and presence, and people stepping close sets her on edge. Her Guardian announces themselves respectfully, whether it is their intent or accidental matters not.

She learns to read their mood by the tenor and heft of sighs. This particular catch of breath betrays laughter, that one sympathy, that one pain. She considers, once or twice, learning a language of signs, or trying to craft one from the hunter hand signals she knows, but there are more pressing things to do with her time, more important steps towards the goal of Crota’s downfall.

Their Ghost speaks to Eris, more than most. It is usually the essentials, what they see, hear and feel. Sometimes he asks questions for his own benefit, or what he hopes would be the benefit of his partner. He is not a good conversationalist, and Eris rarely instigates their interactions.

This is not the only Guardian who helps her. But they are a constant, trustworthy associate. Paired with the Vanguard's praise -Zavala goes so far as to call them a hero- they are always her first choice for missions and strikes. If others have a problem working with them, show any inkling of scorn or distaste, then Eris does not call upon those Guardians again.

When Crota dies, they stand beside her on the tower walk, and look up at the moon, offering no comfort but their presence. She wonders if there are words they would wish to say, if they could.

* * *

She goes to speak with the queen.

They talk of the hive, then the vex, by way of Quiria. Eris finds a tangent, remembers an old friend, and asks of the Garden.

"We have not sent expeditions in some time." Mara says. "There was one little light from your city that came through our reef, searching. I welcomed it, allowed it audience, aided it."

"You met my Guardian? The one who cannot speak?" Eris pauses in turning her relic in her hands.

Mara considers her from her throne, a hand waving in a lazy, disinterested gesture. "It spoke." She replies. "And it is as much mine as yours. A favor is owed."

Eris abides her thoughts. Spins her relic between her hands, fidgeting.

“Perhaps.” She recommends, finally. “The favor can be called upon soon, to further our goals.”

“Perhaps.” Mara echoes, unconvinced, unmoved. But then, the Guardian is not her friend, they are Eris’s.

When did she decide they were friends?

Perhaps, she just wishes to see them again.

* * *

In the end, she calls them to fight Oryx not as a favor, but because she knows they trust her. Because though the Vanguard supports her, she can still feel the stink of suspicion from Guardians that pass her hovel beneath the stairs. Senses them averting their gaze, muffling their voices. 

And if they do not trust her, do not follow orders and instructions without question, how is she to keep them safe from so far away? When the deathsingers weave your demise and the swordbearers draw every blade through every segment of reality and all things are made to kill and devour your light, the Guardians she sends must trust her to bring them back from the edge of the dark. 

So she calls her closest living friend to fight, because trust is more valuable than a score of past nightmares slain. The teams that return to kill Aetheon again and again spend more downtime in the libraries than near her. They hover, detached, when she speaks with Ikora. Andal's avengers wear fur lined collars and dangle shattered ether sups from their belts, that clatter with an alien yet metallic tone. Their fireteam has logged more VIP kills in strikes than any other, and they scorn her and her hive runes. The crucible champions gather about Shaxx and ask one another in hushed tones when she will leave. They are not quite quiet enough to avoid her sharp ears.  
Her Guardian spends months on the dreadnaught, following her guidance. She does not lose them, nor those they have taken to raiding with. Their team kills Oryx not once, but twice. They deliver her trophies with silent reverence, and she accepts them in kind. 

They write her reports, and through the monotonous speech of her tablet a character resolves, the promise of tone and humor, emotions and fears. Their moods filter through headings and footnotes, length and breadth of information. In quiet, private moments, her Guardian has some semblance of a voice.

Eris still does not ask their name. It feels too late now.

* * *

Her work never finishes.

The time comes when she chases heralds of Savathun across the system. Eris dictates letters to her friend and deletes them, over and over. Her words do not convey what she wants them to. She tells of her work, what she has found and hopes to find. She gives apologies for leaving, so quiet and so abrupt. She thought it would be simpler, but finds herself missing, and wondering if she is missed in return. But all her emotion feels empty, and often useless. She has shed so much pain and guilt, transformed it into fuel, it's so easy to do it again now. The difference is this friend is not dead.

And she never knows how to address the letters. She never asked their name.

After a while, she surrenders herself to her work instead.

* * *

Eris hears loud, sure-footed steps on the alien floors of the Scarlet Keep, and knows her Guardian is here. She rips her attention away from the hazy phantom of Sai Mota, turns her back on an old friend for a new.

It has been so long, she wavers between deciding if she should greet them, or apologize for her absence. But hearing them walk with such purpose and resolve reminds her that has never been the relationship they've had.

“Guardian.” She says instead. “We have work to do.”

She sends them about the moon, to old haunts and new. Among the many Guardians that wander in and out of her camp, she always knows them, and their steps.

She sends them to the pyramid. Telemetry falters when the tractor beam takes them. Eris’s heart catches in her throat. Is this how her Guardian feels when they need to speak but no words will come?

She draws runes and tugs threads, traces the gravity of her Dreamsbane in the weave of the world. They are still upon this plane, though utterly and completely surrounded by darkness. Eris can do nothing but wait, and hope. She has prepared them as best she can.

She waits a long time.

“Eris...” Rasps a voice over the comms, so sudden and startling it could easily have been mistaken as an Eliksni with a very good grasp of City dialect. It takes her an agonizing moment to place the source.

“Guardian?” She asks sharply. “Guardian, is that you?”

“Please.” Comes the broken, hoarse reply. Then the choked whisper of a plea. “Help.”

She begins to chant, and tug, and pulls her Guardian free.

* * *

They land with heavy footfalls, and a grateful, but haunted sigh. Her Guardian shakes, she can see the artifact quivering in their hand as they hold it out for her to take. It has an aura of shadow deeper than anything she has ever sensed. Eris stares, expectantly, and does not yet reach, though it’s mysteries beckon.

The Guardian takes a breath, and another, mustering some kind of strength, or courage. The artifact threatens to fall, so Eris mercifully catches it. It pulses and throbs in her hand, begs to be questioned. Her attention is on her friend.

“The… Garden. Took me… to the Black Garden.” They enunciate strangely, testing out the sounds. Eris had never once doubted the loss of their voice was real, but if anyone had, here was their proof.

“What did you see?” Eris hisses, placing the artifact on the table for later, and turning focus to her Guardian. Ikora was right, she thinks. It is a nice voice.

The Guardian tries to speak, but their throat fails to form words properly. Still, noise emerges, and though they shudder, embarrassed, Eris steps forward and tilts her muddled gaze up to meet the bowed helmet.

“Sit, gather your wits.” She instructs, evenly. The Guardian gently displaces some wax candles and a pile of leather cord, leans on one of the crates that makes up her workstation, for support.

“Let us begin anew.” Eris says, ignoring the phantoms that curl around her. As she focuses on her Guardian, her once-silent friend, they almost seem to recede. “We never were properly introduced.” And with a shedding of her anxieties and fears, she offers out a hand to shake. "Eris Morn, it is good to meet you."

**Author's Note:**

> I thought there would be an interesting symmetry and dynamic to have a vision impaired Eris grow close to a Guardian who lost their voice to the Black Garden, explaining the long time without player character voice acting. 
> 
> ~~And entirely ignoring their three or so words of dialogue in Forsaken~~
> 
> It Chrismiss, Merr Chrismiss


End file.
